Also tabb-, -ette. [app. an arbitrary trade-term from TABBY, or perhaps rather from TABINE.] A watered fabric of silk and wool resembling poplin: chiefly associated with Ireland.
1778. Phil. Surv. S. Irel., 201. Poplins, some of which, called tabinets, have all the richness of silk.
1796. Hist. Ned Evans, I. 162. Sixteen yards for a gown of the most beautiful Irish tabbinet.
1842–3. Thackeray, Fitz-Boodle’s Confess., Pref. Yonder she marches … in her invariable pearl-coloured tabinet.
1883. R. Haldane, Workshop Receipts, Ser. II. 148/1. Irish Poplins and Tabinets are to be cleaned with camphine.
attrib. and Comb. 1818. Lady Morgan, Autobiog. (1859), 294. I am still in my Dublin tabinelle gowns.
1852. Illustr. Lond. News, XX. 19 June, 485/3. The Jacquard tabinet weaving machine, belonging to Messrs. Keeley and Leech, of Dublin.
1866. Lond. Rev., 6 Jan., 6/1. The Lord Lieutenant of Ireland … holds … levées which serve to demoralize the middle classes into dire extravagance, and a tabinet gentility.
1886. Rosa Mulholland, Marcella Grace, i, Tabinet-weaving … is now on the wane.
